Ideal is used to be a platform to trade at a size of less than 25,000 USD. It's gone now. I tried to submit an order of 24000 USD as a test. It gave me this warning: "Your order size is below the USD 25000 IdealPro minimum and will be routed as an odd lot order." What does it actually mean? How does it affect your execution price? Am I going to get an unknown worse price if I submit it as an "odd lot order", so to speak?
Idealpro handles orders the same way as Ideal. You will get the same fills from Idealpro as you did with Ideal.
In latest versions of TWS there is a new shortcut for quickly converting account currencies other than your base currency: tws - click on "account" button - currencies - close all non-base ... This will take you to Pending tab (if I remember well) and an order/orders for all currencies will be automatically created as MKT orders. You can still do it manually, even from BookTrader, but you need to use MKT, with LMT it's hard to get a fill. Also, odd lot book only works during the old Ideal hours, which, btw, have been removed from IB fx help section, so here they are: Sun 19:00 through Friday 17:00, Mon-Thur break 17:00 - 19:00. I tried to make a conversion yesterday around 16:15 and the order wouldn't get filled so maybe they have changed the hours a bit, there were no problems later at 19:00.
If you buy or sell without putting in the amt, you will automatically get the min usd. It probably is for example 25,000 not 24,000. Really, if you can't afford to trade $ 25 vs $ 24, stop trading. You are under funded. A 20 pip profit or loss would only be $ 50 vs $ 48. You need to be able to take at least a $ 200 day loss or profit to trade even while learning.
You mean that you can now trade at the IDEAL Pro prices using orders less than $25k? Or do you mean that there was (when IDEAL still existed) a fixed mathematical price relation (regarding IB quotes) between IDEAL and IDEAL Pro and that this relation will be used to determine trade prices for orders less than $25k (which obviously can only be market orders)?
A lot of people want to convert currencies for their stock positions (to avoid interest). Therefore, the question of the OP is relevant.
I already red the answer here: http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/general/education/pdfnotes/PDF-FXTrader.php FX order routing has been simplified with all currency orders now routed to IDEALPRO for best-execution functionality, regardless of the size of the trade. Trade quantities for less than the interbank minimum (~ 25,000 USD) will be routed as an odd lot trade and filled 1 pip outside the interbank BBO. So this is actually good news because, as far as I can remenber, the IDEAL quotes were usually much worse than IDEAL Pro +/- 1 pip.